Another Optimistic ITAA report

Date: Tuesday, June 11, 2002 9:24 AM

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Harris Miller of the ITAA is sticking with his opinion that 1.1 million
high-tech jobs are soon becoming available. This author has a healthy
dose
of skepticism and seems to understand what Miller is up to, he wants to
increase the H-1B limits.

According to Miller there will soon be 578,000 jobs unfilled. Of course
the
implication is that the only way to fill these job positions would be to
dramatically increase in H-1B. That's his bread and butter argument that
has
worked for over a decade.

There is a discussion thread but very few comments so far.

http://builder.com.com/article.jhtml?id=u00420020531sar01.htm

IT hiring: Painting a rosy forecast
Sarah Fraser | May 31, 2002

After more than a year of bleak forecasts for IT hiring, at least one
new
study is projecting dramatic IT job growth in the coming months.

The Information Technology Association of America (ITAA), an Arlington,
VA-based organization of high-tech employers, is now projecting that
more
than 1.1 million tech jobs will be available in the next 12 months.

After the dramatic downturn in 2001, when more than 500,000 IT workers
were
let go, according to ITAA, what accounts for this suddenly rosy hiring
forecast? And should we believe it?

Though it's nice to hear what many of us want to believe-that 2002 will
end
up being a much better year on the jobs front than 2001-we're probably a
little too jaded now to put on the rose-colored glasses.

Rather, when reading such forecasts, one should take them with a grain
of
salt, I believe, given that the ITAA and market researchers weren't
exactly
warning of impending doom in the winter of 2000-2001. On the contrary,
they
were banging out a steady drumbeat of a different kind of warning-that
of
the
mythical IT labor shortage, right up through the spring of 2001, which
many
in the industry remember as the apocalypse (and, in some cases, the last
time
they saw a steady paycheck).

Given that ITAA is an industry-employer organization, one could theorize
about the reasons for this disconnect with the reality that was the IT
hiring
collapse in 2001. (Hint: Can anyone say H-1B visas?)

Still, echoing those infamous IT hiring forecasts from recent years,
this
latest ITAA report insists that companies won't be able to fill roughly
578,000 of the 1.1 million tech jobs they say will be up for grabs in
the
next 12 months.

The reason? ITAA says the culprit is a consistent "gap" between supply
and
demand of IT workers despite falling demand during the recession. IT
managers
surveyed also cited an inability to find qualified candidates, despite
the
legions of unemployed tech pros. So the mythical IT Labor Shortage
morphs
into the Great IT Skills Shortage.

Rosy future for the IT job market?
What do you think? Will the hiring market improve for IT pros in 2002?
Is
there an IT skills shortage? Post your comment in the discussion board
below
or send us an e-mail.

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